This page offers a curated bibliography of studies focused on taxation, landholding, and related subjects, with a particular emphasis on Egypt. Additionally, it includes references on taxation within the broader Islamicate world. Please note that this bibliography is a work in progress.
On Taxation and Landholding in Egypt
Abd Al-Kader, Ali. “Land Property and Land Tenure in Islam,” Islamic Quarterly 5.1, 1959, 4–11.
Abou El Fadl, Khaled. “Tax Farming in Islamic Law (Qibālah and Ḍamān of Kharāj): A Search for a Concept,” Islamic Studies 31.1; 1992, 5–32.
Bagnall, Roger S. “Agricultural Productivity and Taxation in the Later Roman Egypt,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 115, 1985, 289–308.
Becker, Carl H., “The Content of the Papyri on Taxation Practices,” in Fred M. Donner (ed.), The Articulation of Early Islamic State Structures (Burlington: Ashgate/Var-iorum, 2012) [English translation and reprint], 187–215.
Bell, Harold Idris. Greek Papyri in the British Museum, Catalogue with Texts, Volume IV: The Aphrodito Papyri, with an Appendix of Coptic Papyri edited by W.E. Crum. London: British Museum, 1910.
Berkes, Lajos. Dorfverwaltung und Dorfgemeinschaft in Ägypten von Diokletian zu den Abbasiden. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2017.
Berkes, Lajos, and Naïm Vanthieghem. ‘A late Coptic tax receipt from the Egyptian National Library (P. Cair. Nat. Library inv. 3890).’ Journal of Coptic Studies 21 (2019): 13-17.
Berkes, Lajos, Alain Delattre, and Naïm Vanthieghem. ‘A Ninth-century Coptic Tax Refund Document. Reedition of CPR IV 197.’ Chronique d’Egypte 96 (2021): 164-172.
Bianquis, Thierry. “Le fonctionnement des dīwān financiers d’après Al-Musabbiḥī,” An-nales islamologiques 26, 1992, 47–61.
Cahen, Claude. “Contribution à l’étude des impôts dans l’Égypte Médiévale,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 5.3, 1962, 244–78.
Cromwell, Jennifer. Recording Village Life: A Coptic Scribe in Early Islamic Egypt. New Texts from Ancient Cultures, 8, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2017.
Cooper, Richard S. “The Assessment and Collection of Kharāj Tax in Medieval Egypt,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 96.3, 1976, 365–82.
Delattre, Alain, “Remarques sur la taxation au monastère de Baouît au début de l’époque arabe,” in Andreas Kaplony et al. (eds.), From Bāwīṭ to Marw: Documents from the Medieval Muslim World (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 83–94.
Diem, Werner, Arabische Steuerquittungen des 8. bis 11. Jahrhunderts aus der Heidel-berger Papyrussammlung und anderen Sammlungen, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz, 2008.
Frantz-Murphy, Gladys. ‘Conversion in early Islamic Egypt: The Economic Factor.’ In Documents de l’Islam médiéval : Nouvelles perceptives de recherches, edited by Yusuf Ragib, Cairo: InstitutFrançais d’Archéologie Orientale, 1991. 11-17.
Frantz-Murphy, Gladys. “Record of Tax from Imperial Estates in Ushmūnayn,” in Bernhard Palme (ed.), Wiener Papyri, als Festgabe zum 60. Geburstag von Hermann Har-rauer, Vienna, Holzhausen, 2001, 243–48.
Frantz-Murphy, Gladys. ‘The economics of state formation in early Islamic Egypt.’ In From al-Andalus to Khurasan: Documents from the Medieval Muslim World, edited by Petra Sijpesteijn, Lennart Sundelin, Sofia Torallas Tovar, Amalia Zomeno, Leiden: Brill, 2007. 101-114.
Grohmann, Adolf. ‘New Discoveries in Arabic Papyri: An Arabic Tax-Account Book (inv. no. 1400) found in Umm el-Bureigat (Tebtynis) in 1916.’ Bulletin de l’Institut d’Égypte 32 (1949-1950), 159-170.
Kameya, M. ‘From Qustal to Jahbadh: An Aspect of Transition on the Egyptian Tax-Collecting System.’ In New Frontiers of Arabic Papyrology. Arabic and Multilingual Texts from Early Islam, edited by Sobhi Bouderbala, Sylvie Denoix, and Matt Malczycki, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2017: 141-160.
Legendre, Marie. ‘Caliphal estates and state policy over landholding: Theory and practice between literary and documentary evidence from early Islamic Egypt.’ In Authority and Control in the Countryside, From Antiquity to Islam in the Mediterranean and Near East (6th-10th Century), edited by Alain Delattre, Marie Legendre, and Petra Sijpesteijn, Leiden: Brill, 2018. 392-419.
Michel, Nicolas. « Devoirs fiscaux et droits fonciers : la condition des fellahs égyptiens », Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 43/4, 2000, 521-578.
Morimoto, Kosei. The Fiscal Administration of Egypt in the Early Islamic Period. Kyoto: Dohosha, 1981.
Rapoport, Yossef. Rural Economy and Tribal Society in Islamic Egypt: A Study of Al-Nabulusi’s ‘Villages of the Fayyum.’ Turnhout: Brepols, 2018.
Richter, Tonio S. ‘Spätkoptische Rechtsurkunden neu bearbeitet (I): BM Or. 4917 (15) und P.Med.Copto inv. 69.69’, JJurP 29 (1999): 85-92.
Richter, Tonio S. ‘Spätkoptische Rechtsurkunden neu bearbeitet (II): Die Rechtsurkunden des Teschlot-Archivs’, JJurP 30 (2000): 95-148.
Richter, Tonio S. ‘Spätkoptische Rechtsurkunden neu bearbeitet (III):P. Lond. Copt. I 487 – Arabische Pacht in koptischem Gewand’, JJurP 33 (2003): 213-230.
Sijpesteijn, Petra M. ‘Profit Following Responsibility: A Leaf from the Records of a Third-Century Tax- Collecting Agent.’ Journal of Juristic Papyrology 31 (2001): 91-132.
Sijpesteijn, Petra M. Shaping a Muslim State: The World of a Mid-Eighth-Century Egyptian Official. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Torallas Tovar, Sofia. ‘A Tenth-Century list of payments or poll tax collecting on paper from the Montserrat collection,’ In From al-Andalus to Khurasan: Documents from the Medieval Muslim World, edited by Petra Sijpesteijn, Lennart Sundelin, Sofia Torallas Tovar, Amalia Zomeno, Leiden: Brill, 2007. 187-197.
On taxation
Cahen, Claude. « Le service de l’irrigation en Iraq, au début du xie siècle », Bulletin d’Études Orientales, 13, 1949-1951, 117-143.
Cahen, Claude. « L’évolution de l’iqtāʿ du ixe au xiiie siècle : contribution à une histoire comparée des sociétés médiévales », Annales, Économies, Sociétés, Civilisation, 8/1, 195), 25-52.
Cahen, Claude. « Fiscalité, propriété, antagonismes sociaux en Haute-Mésopotamie au temps des premiers ʿAbbāsides d’après Denys de Tell-Mahré », Arabica, 1/2,1954, 136-192.
Campopiano, Michele. “Land Tax ‘alā l-misāḥa and muqāsama : Legal Theory and the Balance of Social Forces in Early Medieval Iraq (6th-8th Centuries C.E.)”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 54, 2011, 239-269.
Campopiano, Michele. “State, Land Tax and Agriculture in Iraq from the Arab Conquest to the Crisis of the Abbasid Caliphate (Seventh-Tenth Centuries)”, Studia Islamica, 107, 2012, 1-37.
Dennett, Daniel. Conversion and the poll tax in early Islam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950.
Duri, ʿAbd al-Azīz al-. “The Origins of iqta’ in Islam”, Al-Abhath, 22, 1969, 3-22.
Duri, ʿAbd al-Azīz al-. “Notes on Taxation in Early Islam”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 17, 1974, 136-144.
Duri, ʿAbd al-Azīz al-. Early Islamic Institutions, Administration and Taxation from the Caliphate to the Umayyads and Abbasids, London, I. B. Tauris, 2011.
Frantz-Murphy, Gladys. Arabic Agricultural Leases and Tax Receipts from Egypt, 148-427 A.H./765-1035 A.D., Vienne, 2001.
Forand, Paul G., “Notes on Ušr and Maks,” Arabica 13,1967, 137–41.
Gibb, Hamilton A.R. “The fiscal rescript of ʿUmar II”, Arabica, 2, 1955, 1-16.
Guessous, Azeddine. « Le rescrit fiscal de ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz : une nouvelle appréciation », Der Islam, 73, 1996, 113-137.
Johansen, Baber. The Islamic Law and Land Tax and Rent: the peasants’ loss of property rights as interpreted in the Hanafite legal literature of the Mamluk and Ottoman periods, London, Croom Held, 1988.
Kallek, Cengiz. “Yaḥyā ibn Ādam’s Kitāb al-Kharādj: Religious Guidelines for Public Finance”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 44, 2001, 104-122.
Katbi, Ghaida Khazna. Islamic land tax = Al-Kharaj: from the Islamic conquests to the Abbasid period. London: I. B. Tauris, 2010.
Khan, Geoffrey. Arabic Documents from Early Islamic Khurasan. London: The Nour Foundation, 2007.
Kennedy, Hugh. ‘The Fiscal System of the Middle East in Islamic Late Antiquity.’ In Fiscal Regimes and the Political Economy of Premodern States, edited by Andrew Monson and Walter Scheidel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 390-403.
Løkkegaard, Frede. Islamic taxation in the classic period, with special reference to circumstances in Iraq. Copenhagen: Branner & Korch, 1950.
Tabataba‘i, Hossein Modarressi. Kharaj in Islamic law. London: Anchor Press, 1983.
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